The Tower and the Lights
by Valkry1
Summary: My YJ collection of random one-shots! If it doesn't have a place, this is where it goes! Ch. 3- Robin's Christmas present.
1. Hal gives Hawk Girl a fish

**I wanted to try one of those prompt contest things. So I did. Er, I had to write about a Secret Santa. The characters involved where Green Lantern (whichever one I choose and I chose Hal Jordan, cause he's my favorite) and Hawk Girl. I know next to nothing about both of them, so I had to do some digging. The little that I know about Hal is more than I know about John, so that makes him my favorite, in case you were wondering. The gift had to be a goldfish… This is my take on things! Read and review, pleeeeaaaaaseeee!**

**Disclaimer: I have never, and probably will never, owned Young Justice.**

Hal Jordan slowly withdrew his hand from the hat held out to him by Superman. The slip of paper sat folded neatly in his palm. He opened it to read the name printed there: Hawk Girl.

"Seriously? Secret Santa?" he whined to Superman. In all honesty, he had nothing against Hawk Girl. She was nice enough and a great person to have on your side in a fight, but to be honest, he didn't really know her. What was he supposed to get her? Plus, she had some kind of thing going on with John, the other Green Lantern.

Superman just stared down at him. "Look, its not my idea either. It was Robin's, and he begged Batman to make us do it." The Man of Steel moved on to the next hero.

Great. Just great. What was he supposed to do now?

Later on that night, he sat in his apartment dejectedly trying to go over gift ideas.

_There are so many other things I wish I were doing right now…_ he thought to himself. The only thing was, if he didn't get the gift soon, he'd never get it and it had to be wrapped and ready at the Watchtower by Friday.

So he stood up, opened the door, and headed to where any good man goes when he has no idea what to buy for someone. Walmart.

As he walked through the sliding doors of the huge supercenter, he looked around. He figured, if he just kept walking, eventually he'd find something.

He started in the food section.

Apples… Pineapples… whatever else is here. Nothing interesting. Who gets food for a present anyways?

He moved on to the baby and furniture section, but quickly left after seeing the aisle of baby strollers. She definitely wouldn't be needing that.

There wasn't anything in the electronics section either except a very nice edition of the Green Lantern movie. Hal thoroughly enjoyed staring at the costumed Ryan Reynolds who was portraying him. He made a note to himself to buy it later.

Next section was camping and hunting gear. Seeing as how Hawk Girl was a superhero, she wouldn't be needing any of that unless the Justice League decided to take a camping trip for 'team building' reasons.

Toys were a no go. They were all centered on little kids, but Hal managed to find himself as an action figure. Now _that_ he was going to buy.

He didn't bother with the gardening section. Hawk Girl didn't seem the type to plant posies.

Clothing was just way too awkward to even think about buying for, so Hal skipped on that department altogether.

It had already been about an hour, much longer than Hal was planning on spending that night, and it was around 9 o'clock when he reached the final section of the store. Pets.

He'd just about given up. He didn't think Hawk Girl had any pets at home. A store employee was loitering in one of the aisles, so he approached her.

"Excuse me, miss?" he asked cautiously.

"How may I help you, sir?" she responded chipperly.

"I'm a secret santa for someone this year, and I have no idea what they'd like. In fact, I hardly know the person!"

The blonde girl's grin was stretched so widely across her face, Hal was sure it was going to split in half.

"I have just the thing! Is the recipient female or male?"

"Female."

"The perfect gift is… a goldfish! We just got a shipment in and they're absolutely adorable!"

Hal was taken aback. A goldfish? There was a bit of irony in that statement. First of all, don't hawk's eat fish? And second of all, how was he supposed to keep it alive till Friday?

But he was out of choices, so he followed the girl to the fish tanks. She was rattling off information about how to take care of them and whatnot, but as he stared into the aquarium, one of the little fishies seemed to be staring back at him.

"I'll take that one!" he surprised himself by saying. _At least, if Hawk Girl didn't like the gift, she could always eat it._ He thought grimly to himself.

Friday came. Hal was a little surprised he'd managed to keep the fish so long. He'd done his best and was EXTRA careful with feeding and cleaning the little bowl he kept it in. Now it was time for the moment of truth. He stuck a little red bow on the bowl, picked it up, and flew (he flies, right? I know next to nothing about Green Lantern…) off to the Watchtower.

When he arrived, the Christmas 'party' was in full swing. This was to say, there were lots of serious conversations, a punch bowl, and some festive streamers everywhere that Hal assumed Robin had put up.

Superman called the attention of the Leaguers. "Okay everyone. Now its time for Secret Santa. I guess I'll go first. Um, Diana, here's your gift…" He handed Wonder Woman a wrapped box. She opened it to find a bracelet and smiled graciously. "It's very nice. Batman, here's your present."

The night went on and on until finally, Superman stood up again. "Has anyone not gone yet?" Hal raised his hand, and to his surprise, Hawk Girl's had too. "Okay you too, I'm assuming you both have your gifts, come on up here." They walked up to where Superman stood. "Uh, since you both have each other as Secret Santas, present your gifts at the same time! One… Two… three." Hal held out his fishbowl to Hawk Girl.

"Oh, wow, Hal." She was laughing now, trying to to slosh the water in her matching fish bowl.

It turned out that they'd both bought each other the same thing.

"You got the smiling Walmart employee's help, didn't you?" she asked, grinning.

Hal nodded. "You too?"

They spent the rest of the night laughing so hard they were crying while recanting both of their trips to the big store that sold it all… Including the perfect gift.

**I hope you like it! Please give me suggestions on improvement! And review, review, review! I will even take anons, so THERE IS NO EXCUSE. **

**xoxo,**

**Val**


	2. Locked IN!

**Ooh goody! Contest prompts! This one was for a contest involving people (or androids, in my case) being locked in or out of different places in the YJ universe. Uh, the contest runner person is Secrets of the Arts. And before I forget, I have to say that I really know nothing of Red Tornado… so this might be super ooc.**

**A few more notes…**

**My 'reply to review' button is broken, so I'm not able to thank anyone until that gets fixed.**

**If you have a tumblr/twitter, go follow me. I'm going to post when I update on there starting pretty soon.**

**Anyways, I hope you enjoy my failish attempt at writing about Red Tornado, some lip gloss, and being LOCKED IN!**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing. Not even the lip-gloss.**

He'd never wanted to play den mother. It wasn't the most becoming job for an android. After all, wasn't that what most of those science fiction novels were about? Robots and androids taking care of the house, washing the dishes, changing nasty babies diapers? Well he wouldn't stand for it. He was a crime-fighting machine. Literally.

But for now, he was watching the kiddy heroes. It wasn't too bad. He was paid the same rate as always and he wasn't in constant danger of being taken apart or whatever else was lethal for an android. And for the most part, they took care of themselves.

But the one thing he was always responsible for was breaking up Wally and Artemis' fights. And today, today he was headed out to the garage where apparently they were fighting over lip-gloss.

But as the doors slid open, the huge room was silent. The only thing in there was the bioship.

Hang on…

The bioship.

That was usually left on invisible, wasn't it? Even stranger was that the door to the ship was down, as if ready for a mission.

There wasn't a mission.

The android approached the ship cautiously and entered. But as he looked around, there was nothing out of the ordinary. He turned to leave only to see the exit sealed off. Scanning the interior, he deduced that the ship had seen him as a threat, closed off the exit and had locked him in. Immediately, he tried his communicator, but it seemed as though the ship had shorted it out.

Red Tornado was locked in the bioship and there was no way out. All he could do was wait.

Waiting is hard for any human being, but for an android, he figured, it shouldn't be to difficult.

10 minutes passed, and nothing had changed. There was no sign of anyone outside the garage.

30 minutes passed with the same result. It wasn't until 45 minutes were gone that Red Tornado noticed a pink plastic tube. Artemis' lip gloss.

He picked it up and sniffed it experimentally. Well, it wasn't _sniffing_ per se, maybe… analyzing the chemical compounds? Anyways, he swiftly deduced that it was raspberry flavored.

"What is this doing here?" he asked to no one in particular.

The ship began to shake as if… as if it were _laughing_.

"Oh no. Absolutely not." Red Tornado was going off on a whim here, but if he were right (which he usually was) he'd have to assume that the ship wanted him to put the gloss _on_.

"I refuse to wear a human girl's makeup."

The ship sank a little, as if disappointed, but then righted itself to its normal height.

"Let me out of here."

The ship stayed silent.

"No, I'm not wearing the lip gloss."

An angry vibe could be felt in the air and he sighed.

"If I put it on, will you let me out?"

This was crazy. He was talking to a ship! But after all, he was an android…

The ship moved up and down as if it were nodding.

Slowly, he uncapped the plastic tube and brought it up to where his mouth would have been if he were humanoid.

Then, as if he were possessed, he quickly smeared the gloss onto his metal face.

The ship began to shake again and the door opened. A very angry teenage girl stormed in.

"What are you doing with my lip gloss!" Artemis screeched.

"I was simply trying to get out of the ship."

"By wearing my makeup?"

He knew the whining wouldn't stop for many hours to come, but as he passed by a window, he couldn't help but notice how attractive the gloss made his metal shine.

Of course, this was purely just an observation.

**The prompt I was given was **

**Character: Red Tornado**

**Place: The Bioship…**

**Object: Raspberry Lip Gloss**

**Did I nail it or fail it? Did you love it or hate it? Tell me pretty please! I want to know! Sorry for any oocness… I did my best to research Red Tornado, but its surprisingly hard to write about an android!**

**Love always,**

**Val**


	3. Tickets

**This is really short, and I know that. It's also incredibly late since Christmas was last week. If it counts for anything, I'd written it before Christmas, I promise!**

I'm not the emotional type. Let's be honest, I live with the Batman! He's not exactly a drama queen, if you catch my drift.

So that's why I was shocked to feel tears welling in my eyes, staring down at the open gift box in front of me that housed a single, silvery ticket. It had been from my Secret Santa, M'gann. (It hadn't been that hard to guess, seeing as how I'd rigged the entire thing.) There was nothing special about the ticket, nothing at all. In fact, only one word written on the entire thing.

It was impossible. There was no way she could have known or guessed. I kept it too locked away, too hidden, too deep within me for her to ever be able to find this.

""Do you like it?" the beaming Martian asked me.

"Y-yes. Thank you," I choked out in reply. She hadn't meant anything by the gift. No sense in hurting her feelings.

"Oh Robin! I got everyone else tickets too so we can all go!" Her smile could light the entire mountain if given the chance.

I nodded, numb. "I'm just going to go to my room." I walked off in a daze with most of the presents still unwrapped. I just couldn't stay in that room a moment longer.

In my dark, plain room, I fumbled with a light switch before falling to my knees in despair. The ticket reflected the light, bouncing the light off of the walls and ceiling.

But it was that word that made my throat clench from tears and my stomach hurt with fear.

CIRCUS

**Did you love it, hate it, or not understand it? Tell me in the reviews! **

**xoxo**

**Val**


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